Topaz Photo AI 3 Complete Guide for Beginners... learn all you need to get started & fix your photos

hello everyone I hope you're having a wonderful day in this topaz photo AI version 3 complete guide you'll learn everything you need to know to maximize its potential including but not limited to this list right here now I've also added timestamps to the description for your convenience and if you stay till the end I'm going to share some Pro tips on customizing topaz photo AI to meet your specific needs which will help speed up your work flow all right if you're ready let's do it all right so topaz photo AI can be used as a standalone app or as a plugin in Photoshop Lightroom Affinity photo and many others and as a standalone you can drag and drop your images on the interface or browse for the file by clicking anywhere on the interface and you can also access recent files over here on the right side and once it opens the file you'll get the topaz photo AI editing interface and we're going to go over all of this in just a moment so using topaz photo AI as a plugin in your favorite editing software is easy and I'm going to show you how to access it in Lightroom classic and I've included a link to documentation and instructions for accessing it in other software via the description below however it works exactly the same once you open an image or multiple images from your editing app so let's go ahead and get some images into topaz photo Ai and I'll share some Pro tips on how to use it now if you don't have topaz photo AI yet you can download a free trial via the affiliate Link in the description below and I appreciate everyone who has used my affiliate link so thank you all right so there are two ways to work with your images in topaz photo AI either using the original raw file or converting your images to Tiff or jpeg now there are advantages to each file format so let's review those so you can get the highest quality image possible now to work with your raw files you're going to go up to file you're going to select plug-in extras and then select process with topaz photo AI and this will open a preview of your raw file in the interface or the editing interface and after you've applied the edits you're going to export them back into your editing app of choice and then topaz photo AI will create a new Tiff file not a raw file during export so in previous versions it was exported as a DG file which is another raw file format so hopefully they bring that back soon until then I'm not a big fan of the current raw workflow because it doesn't give me the best results instead I recommend selecting one or more images right clicking choosing edit in and then selecting topaz photo AI now before those files are open you must tell topaz photo AI which file format to use it will then create a new file that will receive your edits via the app now the options are Tiff PDS and jpeg you must also choose your color space bit depth resolution and any compression so which options should you use well if you're like me and want the highest quality these are the settings that I recommend however there's a downside to using them so the file size from my Nikon Z8 is around 50 megabytes but the tip files that topaz photo AI creates are between 150 and 300 megabytes however these settings have the advantage of making the colors more accurate eliminates color banding and other imperfections that can show up when removing noise and sharpening in topaz photo AI so here's an image I processed as a JPEG file with the Pro Photo color space at 8 Bits And you can see what is known as color banding in the background and this has nothing to do with topaz photo AI but with the limitations of jpeg so a JPEG file is smaller for a reason the color space or the number of colors it can retain is smaller than Tiff and since it's compressed much of the information is thrown out creating a lower quality file however the advantage of the JPEG files is the size and this one is less than 1 Megabyte now if you prefer or need smaller files use these settings then if you notice any imperfections you can redo the image using these Hy quality settings all right now when you open a file in the right panel you'll notice it says analyzing image and I'm going to explain what this is once we get into the editing tools inside of topaz photo AI first let's do a quick overview of the topaz photo AI interface so you know where everything is located so your image will take up the majority of the interface and to make the image feel more of it you can click in the upper right panel to collapse it just click on this icon right here you can also collapse or show the bottom panel by clicking on this icon now real quick these thumbnails provide access to batch processing and other information that can help with your workflow so let's say you edited one image and the rest were shot at the same location using the same camera settings you can copy the edits from one image to another by clicking on this little option right here select all images and then you're going to rightclick on a thumbnail you're going to go up to apply and you're going to click current settings to selected images okay and when you hover over a thumbnail the Ed it's applied to that image will appear so anything in green is the setting recommended by topaz photo Ai and if I make a manual adjustment the color for that edit will turn white so let me go over here and just adjust the slider here and now you can see that that setting is in white now there's also a quick preview of each edit applied so every time you add a a different typee of editing module it has an icon that represents it and you will then see that icon or those icons once you apply those edits on the bottom of the thumbnail right here so the Green Dot means only an autopilot recommendation was applied on this image and these other ones here as well and I'll explain what autopilot is in just a second so I like to use this information to see which photos I still need to process so let's go ahead and close this panel over here by pressing on the letter X actually let me show you this real quick although it's docked to the right side here this panel can be moved anywhere on the interface by clicking up here and then dragging it to a new location once you release your mouse it will stay there now to redock just bring it back and when you see this blue line you're going to release your mouse button and it will reattach now if you click on these three dots up here you're going to see options to close this panel or hide the enhancement you can also show or hide the edits from an enhancement by clicking this icon right here this I icon and then next to that is a letter X and if you click on that that will delete or remove that edit now real quick here are a couple more things about the interface you should know and then we'll get into the editing tools so at the bottom here we have our Zoom slider and a menu of pre-sized zooms next are three methods for previewing the before and after of the edits you apply so the first option shows all the edits in the preview area to see the original you're going to click on the image so once you release it shows the edits click original or choose this one to see the before and after side by side and the third here is my favorite it's just a slider to show the before and after we also have a navigator window up here and this little rectangle right here is going to show you what part of the image is currently being viewed within that rectangle you can click on that rectangle and then drag it to another location to navigate around the image and then this box here will change size once you begin adjusting or changing the zoom level that box will change size accordingly you can also click and drag your image to navigate to another part of it that way okay now before you can edit your file topaz photo AI needs to analyze it and it will automatically apply any AI edits it recommends to to improve your photo and once you open an image or click on another image down here in this panel the process status will appear over here on the right so for this one it's recommending D noise and sharpening so here's the list of items it's analyzing and if you're like me and shoot mostly wildlife and Landscapes we don't need topaz photo AI to detect faces so I'm going to show you how to turn that off later to speed up your your workflow so the process of analyzing your image is known as autopilots in topaz photo Ai and it's the brain of the app so the technology that it uses will determine how much noise to remove how much to sharpen and improve your image overall with other AI editing tools for example if it detects that your photo is very small or a low resolution file f it will automatically upscale it and we'll talk more about upscaling in a moment all right so before we get into all of the different types of edits available there's one thing you may want to do before everything else and that is if you haven't done it in your favorite editing app of choice yet and that is to crop your image so you can do that by clicking on this icon next to this blue button which brings up the crop interface so let's quickly review your options so you can select from pre-made aspect ratios or click custom and then you can type in your ratio with the width and the height now clicking this swap button will convert from a horizontal to a vertical crop and vice versa and the angle here allows you to type in a specific number to rotate it or this is easier if you come over here to the prop overlay and then hover your mouse on one of the outside Four Corners here you can click and rotate that way you can also click and drag a corner or a side to crop as needed and then these lines and boxes represent the rule of thirds to help you create a stronger composition and for this image which I cropped in Lightroom first I place the ey on this point right here which creates a stronger composition and if you click on your photo and drag it around you can reposition it as needed to set up the composition that you want for that crop now hit the apply button to finalize the crop and topaz photo AI will crop your image and take you back to the editing interface so I'm going to go ahead and go back here and reset that since it's already been cropped in Lightroom all right so this is the moment you've been waiting for it's time to review all of the editing Tools in to pass photo AI to create better images now if your right panel is empty like this and no edits were automatically applied click this green button to activate autopilot or click this blue add enhancements button to get a menu of all of your editing tools okay let's review D noise first with this image that I created with ISO so 25,600 when you hover over an AI module a little popup menu will explain the tool and give you a tip this one says that D noise does a better job with raw files however I haven't noticed much difference with my Nikon Z8 files if your experience differs let us know in the comments and please list your camera make and model so this will remove digital noise from your images and as you can see it does a fantastic job so we have three AI models within the noise normal strong and extreme and each is designed according to how much noise you need to remove and this is part of why I prefer topaz photo AI over the AI noise reduction in Lightroom topaz gives us more control and precision over the strength as well as minor de blur and original detail which both give us a way to fine-tune the results to maximize the quality of our images now autopilot is recommending the strong AI model which is surprising due to the amount of noise you would think it would use extreme at ISO 25,000 plus now in a previous version the tool tip showed generic recommendations for each of the three a IMO so take these recommendations with a grain of salt and adjust your settings to create the best result for you now so you know there are two types of digital noise color and luminance color noise is represented by different color specs or pixels and it's the easiest and least destructive type of noise luminous noise on the other hand which are these little grce specs is more problematic removing the noise can make your image softer or blurrier not as sharp and this is due to the process of removing luminous noise which typically blurs the pixels together or Smooths them out to reduce that type of noise this is why we have minor D blur which makes the image sharper and recovers some of the original details that might have been lost in the process now most of the time I find the autopilot settings are pretty good from the start but sometimes I find the settings too aggressive for my taste and will slightly lower the strength so adjust these settings as needed until you're happy with the result now once you remove the digital noise you can sharpen your image if needed so let's add the sharpen AI enhancement and there are four different a I models and each will apply the sharpening and amount slightly differently depending on the situation you need for that image for example if you missed the focus point like I did of my daughter here you can use lens blur to sharpen the image and it will help create a larger depth of field in the process so I think the focus point for this portrait was on her nose and her eye is slightly out of focus however with lens blur I was able to fix it how cool is that I love it so lens blur is why I fell in love with topaz photo AI I thought this image was going to end up in the trash but as you can see topaz saved it all right so here's another image I thought was destined for the trash when I created it so this Wild Horse was running through the New Mexico desert and I wasn't prepared for this encounter and that's why there's so much motion blurs since I wasn't able to to set the proper shutter speed which is only 1 1225th of a second for this image but the motion blur AI model automatically fixes it it's eyes head neck man and other parts of the horse are now sharper however if we scroll down the results are not as good but here's the thing I like the motion blur in this part of the image because it adds to the story okay so yes topaz photo AI can fix images that Lightroom can but we haven't even gone over the best part yet with mask you can Target your AI edits to specific parts of an image so check this out clicking on the selection tab reveals the masking tools which will allow you to precisely place the edits exactly where you want them now if you don't see any edits being applied to your image regardless of how strong or intense your settings are that can be due to the auto selection being set to none but look at all of these other options that you can Target so let's go ahead and select our subject so it did a pretty good job and you'll notice it's not perfect part of the foot wasn't selected and some of the sky or background was so now you can use the brush to add to or remove from the red overlay or the selection now there are three types of brushes to choose from and I find the regular brush to be the easiest and most accurate so adjust your size as needed and then paint over the area where you want to add or remove from your selection so I'm going to use a large brush to remove everything but the head neck and M also adjust the brush's Feathering to create a nice transition from one side to the other or lower it if you want a harder Edge okay so once your mask is set up correctly click on the control Tab and the preview will update with only the edits applied to the Mas area how cool is that I love it now you can also create a mask for any of the other editing tools so check this out I created this image at ISO 8000 and although it does a really good job of removing the digital noise I find it's too aggressive for the snapping turtle since it removes some of its detail so if I adjust the strength I can regain some of those details but now it's not aggressive enough for the background so I can Target the snapping turtle and then apply the amount of noise reduction I want let's just say that that the autopilot settings are perfect but now I can't return here and Target just the background however you can click on ADD enhancements again add another instance of denoise select the background and then choose your noise reduction settings to get the desired results so think of the possibilities for removing noise and or sharpening in different parts of your image it's a game Cher it's 10 times better than anything else out there all right so next we have lighting and balance color which will allow you to increase or decrease the brightness of your image or change its white balance however I recommend making your exposure and color adjustments in the Lightroom or your editing app of choice before bringing them into topaz photo AI you're most likely going to get better results in Lightroom versus adjusting them with these tools I previously mentioned that autopilot will Auto upscale your image if it detects a low res file and you can see this in action with this image here that I created around 35 years ago I shot this on a film and then scanned it to create this digital file which is only 1,200 by 18800 pixels long so it's definitely a low res file since it's a portrait autopilot has also activated the face recovery feature now there's only one slider to tweak the Improvement of the face or faces if you have multiple like this one that has 11 so it looks like topaz photo AI found them all however the infant is grade out so autopilot is unsure if this is a face and clicking on the edge will activate face recover y for that subject now you don't need a lowres file to upscale an image let's say you want to increase the size of any image we're just going to add that enhancement and then you can upscale from 2x to Max which is 6X you can also type in a specific size for the width and height right here or 3 to five in this box but keep in mind that if you're already using a high-res file for example this image is a 45 megapixel file the max when you click on this button here it will max out at these settings here which is a little more than 500 megapixels so the AI upscale is going to generate new pixels when upscaling your image intelligently and it's pretty impressive with high res as well as low res 5 FES all right next we have an image here with some text and if you need to upscale that text may become blurry or if it's very small within the image from the start you may want to make it sharper either way you can preserve the text by adding the enhancement then to activate the tool you'll need to tell topaz photo AI where the text is in your image since it cannot autodetect it at this time so we're going to go into the selections tab select the add to option adjust the brush size if needed and then paint over the text you want to enhance so the mask then lets topaz photo AI know where the text is within the image then going back to controls will activate the enhancement and then you can adjust the strength as needed now personally I do all my retouching in Lightroom and or photoshop before I bring my images into topaz photo AI however sometimes I miss something and can quickly remove it with the remove enhancement so again we're going to paint over the object we want to remove then click on the remove selection button and topaz photo AI will do its magic hopefully all right so it didn't get rid of the sign the first time so I might have to try this a couple more times to get rid of it however I know in Photoshop it's a lot quicker easier and more accurate so hopefully in the future the remove tool will become more powerful with each new update all right so there's one other hidden feature that can give you more precision and control over your edits and that is the ability to click on an enhancement and rearrange the order of the enhancement so according to the topaz de velers this will alter how each enhancement is processed and can alter the results so I haven't seen this for myself so if you find this useful let us know in the comments below now another powerful feature that can boost your productivity is the ability to create a preset of enhancement so by clicking on the save as a preset button here you can save all these edits you've applied and then after you give it a name and save it it will appear at the top of the enhancement tools menu so if you want to use it just come in here and click on that preset and it will apply all those edits that were saved to it all right so once you have all your edits done we need to export your files back into your editing app of choice and you'll do that with this little button down here now before you do that let me show you how to customize topaz photo AI for a faster workflow so we're going to go to the top here the topaz photo Ai and select preferences or it might be called settings and you can alter the default settings based on your personal needs so let's say you shoot while life and Landscapes and don't need autopilot to analyze the image for faces well just come over here and select none now it's still going to show up in the list over here when it's analyzing but it won't take the time to locate faces and you'll notice that autopilot will be faster once you have that turned off and then you can come in here and make other adjustments as well for example in D noise I want the autopilot to automatically make a suggestion based on any amount of noise from low and above or you can do medium and high and above or severe only then autopilot will only suggest D noise when it recognizes a severe amount of digital noise like ISO 25,000 or higher so set that up according to your own needs all right you can also choose which model strength is the default because maybe you notice that let's say after editing x amount of photos that normal works most of the time with which it does for me which is why I have normal selected and then under sharpen because I like to use a lens blur most of the time I've set that as the default with a normal model strength so make sure to click apply here to save those settings and then one more thing for future updates on topaz photo ai3 and above a blue button will appear up here in the top right letting you know if one or more new updates are available and clicking on it will auto update topaz photo AI now to learn about these new features and tools in those updates subscribe and hit the notification button you can also learn about all of the updates in this playlist right here thanks for watching and have an awesome day

Channel: Parker Photographic

Views: 5,601

Keywords: topaz photo ai, topaz labs, photo editing, topaz photo ai tutorial, topaz photo ai for beginners, photo ai, photoshop plug-ins, lightroom plug-ins, topaz photo ai guide, topaz photo ai beginners, topaz photo ai 3, topaz photo a 3 guide, photo ai 3

Id: tmuQZRMoGm0

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024